Le­sotho Gar­den wins UK flower show

LE­SOTHO in­spired gar­den “Hope in Vul­ner­a­bil­ity” has been voted by the Bri­tish public as their favourite gar­den award­ing Matt Keight­ley the Peo­ple’s Choice Award at the Chelsea Flower Show 2015.

Matt Keight­ley has for the sec­ond year run­ning been awarded the Peo­ple’s Choice Award at the Chelsea Flower Show 2015. The Hope in Vul­ner­a­bil­ity gar­den de­signed by Keight­ley, com­mis­sioned by Senete­bale and in­spired en­tirely by Le­sotho has be­come the ‘Peo­ple’s Favourite Gar­den’.

The award is voted for by all of the peo­ple who vis­ited the Chelsea Flower Show, or watched the cov­er­age on the tele­vi­sion of the show, as what they see as the best gar­den. Un­like the medal awards, this award has no of­fi­cial judg­ing by the Chelsea Flower Show panel.

I has been said that the Chelsea Flower Show judges are out of touch with what the public recog­nise as ex­cep­tional, given two years run­ning now Keight­ley has been awarded an im­pres­sive Sil­ver-gilt medal, but not the Gold.

Keight­ley spoke with The South African last week and had this to say about the Peo­ple’s Choice Award and what it would mean to him if the gar­den won.

Does the peo­ple’s choice award mean “I think the medals awarded to the de­sign­ers is an in­cred­i­ble achieve­ment and are great, but the Peo­ple’s Choice Awards is one that means slightly more.

The Peo­ple’s Choice means more be­cause it is the way of the public say­ing that they have un­der­stood what I tried to do with the de­sign. They have got on board with the con­cept I am try­ing to get across.”

Are you also try­ing to in­spire peo­ple so that as­pects of your gar­dens will be present in their gar­dens? “Yes, ab­so­lutely. At the start of the process, given the plants were South­ern African, there was a pos­si­bil­ity that the gar­den would get that re­ac­tion. This gar­den had the po­ten­tial not to in­spire, but so many peo­ple are say­ing they would want var­i­ous bits in their back gar­dens.”

While a great suc­cess for Keight­ley, the in­spi­ra­tion for this gar­den, spon­sored by the David Brown­loe Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion, re­mains deeply rooted in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Prince Harry who spent his gap year in Le­sotho in 2004.

To­gether with Prince Seeiso, Prince Harry es­tab­lished the char­ity, Sen­te­bale, and later this year the char­ity in­tends to open a school on the site where Prince Harry vis­ited called, Mamo­hato Chil­dren’s Cen­tre.

Keight­ley will hope­fully now take a wellde­served break and look for his next project to tackle. I’m sure the peo­ple will all agree he de­serves one. — Thesouthafrican

The Ba­sotho Di­as­pora Choir per­form on Sen­te­bale - hope in Vul­ner­a­bil­ity gar­den at Chelsea Flower Show on Satur­day.